Nintendo Has No Plans for Wii U or 3DS Price Drop, Offering Cheaper Games Instead

Due to the overall sales failure of the Wii U, Nintendo has had some rough times in the past few years. After the fleeting success of the Wii, Nintendo found themselves struggling to retain customers, and turning in rare quarterly losses. However, Nintendo is looking to make a comeback with a few new initiatives, including their recently launched Amiibo line of collectible figures. Another part of that plan, as detailed by Nikkei, is to offer cheaper games to consumers along with more free trial versions of released titles.

We aim to return to profit levels more typical of the company in the year ending March 2017

The overall aim of the cheaper games isn’t just to lower the price for consumers, but Nintendo as well. By taking past titles and reworking them for the 3DS, Nintendo can lower their own costs as well. Keeping development costs down will allow for more experimentation, while enticing customers with very low prices.

The free trial versions will also help by bringing in new customers for titles that otherwise might have been ignored. By letting people play through the early parts of the game for free, Nintendo hopes to grab player’s interest for the full version. It also helps raise awareness and boosts name recognition at the same time.

These ideas were offered as a counter to the requests from others to cut the price of Nintendo’s currently running consoles, the Wii U and 3DS. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata stressed that they had no plans to lower the price of either of their systems at this time.

Despite this Iwata feels that Nintendo will reach their usual level of profitability by 2017. “We aim to return to profit levels more typical of the company in the year ending March 2017.”